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6 Mar 2007 : Column 1808W—continued
| DETR/Defra: “Are you doing you bit?” campaign | ||
| £000 | ||
| Expenditure | Expenditure at 2006-07 prices | |
| (1) This campaign served to raise public awareness and to encourage individual action to help the environment. However, in the absence of an underpinning legal requirement, it was considered to be of lower priority than the Department’s other environmental programmes which bodies such as the Energy Savings Trust and NGOs will deliver. Winding down the campaign helped deliver savings of £3.4 million pa from 2005-06 onwards. | ||
Staff and resource figures are not available.
All expenditure at 2006-07 prices has been calculated using the GDP deflator tables from HM Treasury. Since similar questions were answered there have been changes in accounting practices which have given rise to variations in some of the figures given in this answer.
Energy: Conservation
Lynne Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment he has made of local authority compliance with provisions in the Home Energy Conservation Act 1995, with particular reference to the performance of Birmingham city council. [124601]
Ian Pearson: Birmingham city council has reported a 21.5 per cent. improvement in energy efficiency in residential accommodation to March 2005 under the Home Energy Conservation Act 1995 (HECA). Defra has provided annual written feedback to all English local authorities in response to their HECA reports.
We are currently carrying out a review of HECA, which fulfils a commitment made in the Energy White Paper 2003. The review is due to end shortly.
EU Emissions Trading Scheme
Mr. Morley: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what research he has commissioned into the methodology of including avoided deforestation in the Kyoto Protocol carbon trading rules. [124942]
Ian Pearson:
Any access to carbon markets will require methodologies to measure emissions from deforestation, because it is necessary to estimate whether a reduction in emissions has been achieved
relative to an agreed level. Methodologies to do this have been developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as part of its work on land use, land use change and forestry. The UK made a large contribution to the detailed scientific work and overall guidance of this effort.
The Natural Environmental Research Council is currently considering proposals for work under its Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System (QUEST) programme that deal with the practicalities of biosphere management including emissions reduction from deforestation. One £350,000 study will explicitly address methodologies for avoided deforestation (along with forest management and bioenergy production) under the Kyoto Protocol. The other planned study (£500,000) investigates the mitigation potential of avoided deforestation compared with other activities, in a context of optimal sustainability.
Flood Control: Finance
Chris Huhne: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment he has made of the proportion of Government funding for flood defences planned to be dedicated to (a) maintenance and (b) new build of defences in 2006-07. [124712]
Ian Pearson: Defra’s current allocation of Flood Risk Grant in Aid for the Environment Agency (EA) for 2006-07 is £419 million. Of this, the EA estimates £153 million will be spent on maintenance-related activities and £196 million on the capital improvement programme, with the balance funding other activities.
Some £13 million of Defra grant will be spent by local authorities (LAs) and internal drainage boards (IDBs) on capital flood risk improvement projects.
Funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will support estimated LA expenditure of £72 million on their levies to the EA and IDBs (£23 million and £27 million respectively, some of which will be spent on capital improvement works). LA’s own spend on flood risk management operations and maintenance is estimated at £22 million.
LAs estimate spend of £66 million of Defra grant for coast protection capital improvement projects and £14 million on coastal erosion maintenance and operations supported by DCLG. Both expenditures are primarily to defend against coastal erosion but often also provide benefits against flooding from the sea.
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the main headings are in the budget for flood defence spending; what budget has been allocated for each of the next three years; and what the decision-making process is for the allocation of these funds. [124860]
Ian Pearson:
Defra has overall policy responsibility for flood and coastal erosion risk management in England, funds most of the Environment Agency’s (EA) flood-related work and grant-aids individual capital improvement projects undertaken by local authorities and internal drainage boards. The programme to manage risk is driven by these operating
authorities within the framework of desired outcomes for the programme and investment prioritisation approach set by Defra. Defra does not carry out works directly, and nor does it direct the authorities on which specific individual projects to undertake.
Within the overall budget for flood and coastal erosion risk management, Defra allocates funding as follows, with the 2007-08 allocation in brackets:
(i) Grant in Aid to the EA for flood risk management (£435.7 million).
(ii) Funding to local authorities and internal drainage boards for capital flood risk improvement projects, channelled through the EA (£21.2 million).
(iii) Funding to local authorities for capital coast protection improvement projects (£46.1 million). These are primarily to defend against coastal erosion but often also provide benefits against flooding from the sea.
(iv) Other spend such as research and development, consultancies, Defra running costs (£6 million).
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) also provides significant support to local authorities for further expenditure on flood risk management activities through its local government funding mechanism.
Funding in 2008-09 and 2009-10 will be considered in the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review.
Grant in Aid for the EA, comprises of two parts. Firstly, funding transferred from DCLG to Defra which had previously been provided to the EA by local authorities via DCLG-supported levies. Since 2004 this has been provided to the EA as direct Grant in Aid from Defra.
Secondly, funding from a shared capital allocation divided between the EA, local authorities and internal drainage boards. In previous years, capital funds have been allocated using the Defra priority score system. Owing to the high level of forward commitment in 2007-08 there was only a small amount of money available to fund new works schemes. For that reason, it was decided that only certain development studies and coastal monitoring projects by local authorities and internal drainage boards helping to maintain the forward programme would receive new funding except for the works scheme at Weston-Super-Mare. Letters to the authorities setting out the detail of the 2007-08 allocation process are published on the Defra website.
Flood Control: North Yorkshire
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the decision making process is for the allocation of funding to flood defence scheme projects in North Yorkshire following structural changes in the process. [124982]
Ian Pearson: Most flood risk management work in North Yorkshire is carried out by the Environment Agency (EA). Flood risk Grant in Aid from Defra is provided to the EA as a block. The EA then allocate funding from the block to activities such as flood warning, capital improvement projects, maintenance of existing assets and preventing inappropriate development in areas at risk of flooding etcetera.
The EA allocates capital improvement funding to projects in its regions using a priority scoring system.
This system gives priority to projects currently under way or to those projects which are both urgent and exempt from the priority scoring requirement because of, for example, legal obligations. Remaining funding is allocated to those projects which are likely to provide most benefit (economic, protection of people and environmental) per unit cost nationally. Capital improvement funding for North Yorkshire, therefore, will depend on the number and cost of projects in that region which receive funding through this process.
Institute for Public Policy Research
Mr. Heald: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what funding the Energy Saving Trust provided to (a) the IPPR and (b) IPPR Trading Ltd. in each year since its creation; and for what purpose funding was provided. [124214]
Ian Pearson: The Energy Saving Trust (EST) is a private company. Decisions about what funding it might provide to third parties are a matter for the EST Board. However, I understand that none of the grant funding provided to the EST by Defra in support of its energy efficiency activities has been provided to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) or IPPR Trading Limited.
Waste Disposal
Martin Horwood: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (1) what his most recent estimate is of the weight of (a) glass, (b) paper, (c) aluminium, (d) steel, (e) plastics and (f) wood thrown away by (i) households and (ii) businesses in England in a year; and if he will make a statement; [124072]
(2) if he will estimate the difference in the amount of (a) energy and (b) water consumed for every tonne of (i) glass, (ii) paper, (iii) aluminium, (iv) steel, (v) plastics and (vi) wood that is produced from recycled rather than new material; and what proportion the energy used to produce each from recycled materials represents as a proportion of the energy used for producing them from new material; [124073]
(3) what his most recent estimate is of the amount in tonnes of waste diverted from landfill through the recycling of (a) glass, (b) paper, (c) aluminium, (d) steel, (e) plastics and (f) wood in a year. [124075]
Mr. Bradshaw: Analysis of the composition of the household waste stream was undertaken by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in 2002. These estimates have been applied to the total household waste arisings in 2005-06 for WasteDataFlow as follows:
| Tonnes (000) | |
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